In these times of macadamized roads and railways, we can scarcely appreciate the difficulties our ancestors had to encounter a century ago in accomplishing a journey. To travel a distance of fifty miles was so serious a thing that it was only undertaken on urgent occasions; and we need not wonder that, when the figures increased to hundreds, it was customary for our forefathers to settle their affairs with more care and completeness than men do now-a-days when leaving home for the antipodes. The roads were wretched in the extreme; in some parts, at certain seasons of the year, they were all but impassable, and this, combined with the strength and weight of vehicles built to contend with rough usage, rendered locomotion a slow and tedious process. No one will be surprised to learn, therefore, that Mr. Phillipson and the captain's wife were two days on the road, and did not reach Exeter until the shades of evening had drawn in, and the dusky oil lamps were twinkling in the streets of the city, on the second evening.
Their journey, however, was a delightful one, as far as externals were concerned. A frosty morning, sharp and crisp, gave omen, as the merchant thought, of propitious experiences, and was regarded as a special boon. It braced up nature marvellously, turning dangerous sloughs into solid roadways; and even if the jolting was thereby augmented, the anxieties of sunken wheels and floundering cattle were escaped. Instead of a host of forebodings in anticipation of untold depths of soaked clay and sludgy mire, there was the prospect of keeping to the earth's surface, and of doing better than the Devonshire traveller of a certain century, who is reported to have 'rode fourteen miles in fifteen days.'
The sun shone out most brightly and cheerily on the scene as the travellers wended their way from Northam to Bideford, and enabled them, after they had climbed the old Torrington road, to gaze on a landscape which, though familiar, would have been anew enchanting, had the nature of their errand permitted them to enjoy it. It seemed as if the contagion of ocean's society had greatly affected those highlands, for not more wavy was the Atlantic itself, and up and down they went, until at length they dived into a true Devonian lane, with its towering hedges of furze, hazel, and tangled weed, its sharp descent, its labyrinthine windings, its rough and rocky pavement, and emerged in a shady dell in which a rustic village nestled, surrounded by woody hills and rock-capped heights, on which the grey mists of morning continued to hover.
These sylvan and picturesque districts were succeeded by bleak moors, or 'commons,' as they are called, where Mary was glad of additional wrappings, and the merchant made frequent appeals to a bottle with which he had considerately furnished himself. These wild, exposed regions stretch away for miles, affording a scanty pasturage for cattle, and supplying the villagers in the neighbourhood with peat and furze. They are for the most part covered with rough grass, ferns, and rushes, and here and there a morass may be met with, as well as a sprinkling of granite boulders, whilst loftier specimens of this primitive rock occasionally spring up in fantastic forms, the hiding-place of highwaymen in days of yore, who drove a good business on these desolate wastes.
And so the face of the country alternated between the romantic and the sterile until they reached the neighbourhood of Exeter, where the former has it all its own way. But the evening was too far advanced, and our travellers were too wearied to do homage to beauties of scenery, and gladly did they exchange the biting air for the inviting comforts of the London Inn.
As soon as Mr. Phillipson had breakfasted the next morning, he made his way to the jail. Unfeeling and selfish as he was, strong qualms of conscience troubled him as he strode along, despite his infidel theories; nor was he able, with all his efforts, to command in full the powers of his scheming, reckless mind. For two days he had been travelling with a woman of a sorrowful spirit, whose meek sadness and high-toned Christian principle had embarrassed and cowed him. Her sensitiveness had put to shame his stolidity; her simple-hearted confidence in her husband had roused into spasmodic action the dying pity of his heart. If ever regret had place within him it was now; but, ashamed of these softer emotions, he took a little time to shake them off before visiting the prisoner, and walked for an hour in the streets, recalling more congenial feelings, which might enable him to act his part becomingly. Having obtained permission to see the captain, he was admitted through a heavy-looking gateway, strongly secured, into a yard which disclosed on all sides grim-visaged doors frowning implacably, and small rusty gratings which looked like devouring eyes—the outward and visible signs of dark and saddening scenes within. There may now, perhaps, be the extreme of pitying benevolence in prison accommodation and usage; but at that time there was the extreme of unpitying neglect.
Through one of these surly-faced doors the merchant passed with his conductor into a low dark passage, where his ears were assailed by the chilling music of clinking manacles resounding from cells on either side; and the application of a massive key introduced him to his victim. The captain was stretched on his hard bed, as the most satisfactory position he c............